Now I could pass on to others what God had done for me.
Not long after I started, Pat and her husband moved and left the ministry for me and Garrett to run. When he couldn’t join me, often times I was alone and locked down with over 100 prison inmates. But I loved every minute of it! I had never seen so many women so desperate for Jesus in my life.
Elated by prison ministry and encouraged by Pat to continue my education in Biblical studies, I enrolled in the Harvestime International Institute where I learned powerful new teachings. With courses such as Spiritual Strategies for Warfare, Strategies for Spiritual Harvest, Mobilization Methodologies, Evangelism and more, God began to prepare me for a powerful ministry. I didn’t know it at the time, but He was on a mission to turn me into an American Missionary.
At the same time I began my Biblical training in Madera, something else happened. The Holy Spirit-filled church I attended announced a special guest speaker would be at the women’s monthly meeting. She was billed as a prophetess.
Okay, I thought. That’s weird.
Aren’t prophetesses only in the Old Testament? I asked one lady. She just smiled at me and encouraged me to come and hear the Word of the Lord. So, with my guard up, I arrived on time and sat there with my arms folded. I became especially alarmed when I saw the girl who went up to speak was no older than 25. As if God couldn’t use a young woman to speak to me.
But I was set in my Champion ways. I wanted to hear Scripture and wisdom, not some young girl spout her mouth off about what she thought she “heard” God speak.
Suddenly, she began to pace the stage and shouted out to the crowd that the Holy Spirit wanted to move prophetically tonight.
What’s prophetic? I thought. Then she began to point to some of the women in the audience and said they were standing out to her like sore thumbs and that God had a message for a few of the ladies tonight.
Unexpectedly, she pointed to me and said for me to stand up, that God had a Word for me. I looked around. She couldn’t have possibly meant me.
“Who, me?” I asked. The other ladies made me stand up to hear the Word she had for me.
She began to speak. “The Lord says to you, He has made you bold. In fact, He is making you so bold that I see a picture of you clinking your glass in a restaurant boldly offering deliverance to everyone around you.”
I cringed. I vowed to never go out to dinner again. Okay, how could this lady know I’m bold? I had to admit she was right about that one.
She continued, “God says to you that you have a prophetic message for the Church and that church leaders need to listen to you.” The leader in me liked that part.
Then she called me up on stage and in front of everyone she told me I had been given a Deborah’s anointing and that I was called to be the Church fire alarm and had a powerful message of warning.
Who’s Deborah? I nervously thought. How am I a Church fire alarm? I wondered.
That’s when I started to feel very uncomfortable. But the young prophetess didn’t seem to care. She made me open my palms and she smacked them down with hers and suddenly an amazing power flowed through my whole body. Then she laid hands on me and “activated” the new boldness in me that God wanted me to operate in.
Then I walked back down the stage in a strange blur and found my way back to my seat. Women around me started poking me saying they were excited about the Word I received while I just sat there.
What just happened to me? I wondered. I felt different and something inside of me was very excited. My spirit was leaping inside of me actually. Then the prophetess suddenly called on my daughter Tiffany and told her she saw drumbeats all around her and that Tiffany had a powerful musical gift. I suddenly remembered back to the old days when I walked downstairs to my four year old pounding on my shoe boxes with wooden spoons while she watched MTV.
Tiffany and I just stared at each other. We knew God was speaking to us through that hotshot 25 year old prophetess. I was humbled to say the least.
Now that my theology had been smashed and the meeting ended, women excitedly chatted about their “words” while I quietly grabbed my things to leave.
Deborah, who’s Deborah? I thought as I tried to remember her from the Bible. But as I stood there thinking, another lady approached me. She was a sweet little old lady that I saw every Sunday so of course, I wanted to be polite and listen to her.
“Excuse me, honey, Holy Spirit says to tell you that you are His Warrior Bride.” She smiled and hugged me and then walked away.
Um, okay that was even weirder, I thought as I grabbed my daughter Tiffany to get out of there. The church proved too weird for me and I scrammed home to go and tell Garrett we needed a new church.
When I got home he was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him because he had to get up early for work. So, I got on the computer and checked email instead. Tiffany went to bed while I sat up and “thought” about what had happened. I couldn’t shake the feeling that every word that young prophetess had said was true.
“Okay God,” I finally spoke out loud, “if any of what happened tonight is true, I’m going to need some proof. Prove to me right now it’s true and I’ll believe it. But I have to know it’s you.”
God surprised me when He asked me, “How do you want me to prove it?”
I looked up at my computer and saw Google on the screen and so I dared God to show me ONE web page with the two search terms, “Deborah’s Anointing” and “Warrior Bride” and that if BOTH of those search terms turned up on ONE web page, I would believe Him. I made it clear to Him that the results had to be on ONE web page, not one web site.
God replied, “Done.” So, I pecked away at the keyboard with a half smirk on my face and typed in the two terms in Google and pushed “Enter”.
Then I clicked the first link and suddenly my eyes popped out when I saw a web page that read, “Anointed for War,” with an article beneath titled, “Warrior Bride: The Four Anointings”, and beneath that it listed the Deborah’s Anointing as one of the four spiritual warfare anointings.
I fell off my chair and worshipped God. That was literally impossible for one web page to show up with all of those terms. When I finally got back up in my chair to read over the web page again, I went back to the Google results and saw there was NO OTHER WEB SITE that listed any of those terms in one single place. Only the one web page had them.
Still shaking my head in disbelief, I searched on Google to learn about the Biblical Deborah. When I read that she led ten thousand men into war, I knew. I knew that was me. I knew somehow that’s what I was called to do. But I didn’t know how. I also read that Deborah was the only female judge, military leader and prophetess and only Samuel and Moses also held those three offices.
Oh, wow, I thought. I was even more humbled. Who am I to be a prophetess for God? I wondered in complete awe.
The next morning I got up early to give Garrett an earful of what God did and He just smiled. He already knew his bold wife had a big purpose.
Although I wasn’t quite sure what that purpose was, I continued my schooling and volunteered at the prison and local rescue mission until one day Garrett announced we had to move because God blessed him with an even better job. Heartbroken to leave the prisoners and rescue mission behind, I wondered what God was up to. When I asked Garrett where we had to move he replied, “Bakersfield.”
Gulp. Why was God moving me closer to Los Angeles?
XXVI
Admit One
Journey to Paradise
Chapter Twenty Six
It was strange to move to Bakersfield. Everything was being handed down to me on a silver platter. First, we bought a house in Bakersfield only a year after I finally broke down and agreed to buy a house in Madera. I figured I loved prison ministry and Garrett had a great job so we might as well settle down there. So, when Garrett came home a year later to tell me he was offered a sales job for a major medical company with an opening in Bakersfield, I was confused.
&n
bsp; “But we just bought a house in Madera,” I argued.
But he said he knew it was God. So, when we put the house up for sale without a realtor and I did all the legal paperwork myself and then sold it for $100,000 more than we bought it for, I KNEW it was God. What person wakes up one day and decides to sell their house a year later after they bought it and make $100,000 on the deal?
Only God could do that. I guess He wanted us to move to Bakersfield.
The second reason I knew God was up to something was because my spiritual mentor’s best friend was the women’s director at Bakersfield Rescue Mission and wanted me to be a counselor on the women’s recovery program.
How perfect is that? I thought as I dreamed of rescuing women. Yep, God was definitely up to something.
Third, God led us to the perfect house. A four-bedroom home with a big back yard and huge pool, I promised God if He gave me the house I would invite all the rescue mission ladies over for Baptisms and barbecues. He loved my idea.
So, we slapped down a nice large down payment, moved in June of 2004 and enrolled our girls into the local Christian school right around the corner. Life could just not be any more perfect!
With money to burn, Garrett and I bought hundreds of beautiful lush plants and assorted rose bushes to design our new backyard paradise. Garrett, a former landscaper and a Dutch gardener, knew everything about gardening. He had spent years dreaming about his ideal garden and now was his chance to design it. It was one of the most special and spiritual times in our marriage. We ended up buying over 20 varieties of roses and I bought a book on how to take care of them. You can imagine the lessons God taught me through pruning.
Garrett also loved palm trees. He taught me how to build a beautiful landscaped pool area with Queen Palms, Birds of Paradise and yellow and red Daylilies. Our backyard looked more like a lover’s paradise. The wild Italian in me pitched in and added a little spice to the “perfect” rows of Dutch plants. I wanted trailing Ivy. Garrett wanted colorful rows of Impatiens. We compromised and did both. Together we learned how to build a beautiful wild lush paradise beneath one of the hottest sun spots in California: good old Bakersfield.
It baked us all right. With high temperatures up to 110 degrees during the summer, we swam in our pool every day. And with our extended family close by, we invited them over for barbecues and had the best family times together. My life was absolutely perfect.
Almost every morning we sat outside in our beautiful lush paradise and prayed and thanked God for all He had given us. With the fragrant aromas of Star Jasmine and roses surrounding us, we enjoyed our little piece of heaven on earth.
It amazed me to think about how far God had brought us in eight years.
Now, if only we could find a good church, I thought.
We started visiting churches each Sunday but we didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Either one church was dead in worship or another one was dead in the Word. We wondered if we were being overly critical.
Being a Bible student didn’t help either. I heard things in the pulpit that caused me to bite my tongue repeatedly. To ease the pain of church, I started bringing my homework with me and quietly worked on it behind my opened Bible. We started to wonder if we were being hypocrites for playing the role of “church goers” but not getting anything out of the service. We seriously questioned if something was wrong with us.
Little did we realize that God was teaching us some important lessons.
Bakersfield was tough for us. We attended over 20 churches when we first arrived here and although many of them had good things about them, we never found a church that was similar to what we knew and loved, the Champions Centre. We were used to wisdom from the Word, celebratory powerful worship and working together as a team to build Champions in one another. The farmer mentality in Bakersfield simply did not offer that.
“Now what do we do?” I asked Garrett.
“Pray,” he said as he shoveled dirt into his last hole.
I began to really cry out to God about finding a church home. We continued our search but found nothing we felt we could call “home”. But God kept blessing us and teaching us on our own. We knew He had a purpose in all things so we trusted Him.
But it wasn’t easy. I was extremely concerned I wasn’t being fed God’s Word enough. Then all of a sudden, God blessed me with a special surprise: I got accepted into Vision International University to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Theological Studies.
A whole new world opened up for me and I began to study hours every day about the thing I loved most: God’s Word.
Unbeknownst to me my Theology would get smashed again.
One of my first courses on Hermeneutics, the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible, really messed me up. I was flabbergasted and about to sue the entire Christian world when I learned all the different ways to study the Bible through cultural, grammatical and historical methods.
Why have I never heard of these methods before? I wondered in disgust.
I about fell off my chair as I re-studied Scriptures I had been taught throughout my life. I especially fell off my chair when I learned about Hebrew idioms. Idioms are simply phrases. For example, an American idiom would be when we say something like, “it’s raining cats and dogs,” and we understand that the phrase means “it’s raining heavy”, but to a foreigner who hears that phrase, he may think it’s literally raining animals on top of us. He may not understand it’s an American idiom and may need someone to properly translate the phrase for him.
Hmmm…
So, when Jesus, who is fond of using Hebrew idioms, says things like, “If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light,” in Matthew 6:22, it’s actually a Hebrew saying that means, “if you are generous.” It has nothing to do if your eye can see well. Jesus was talking about being stingy versus being generous.
Idioms for Idiots, I thought as I wrote down the title for a future book for Christians.
No wonder the Scripture in James 3:1 reads:
“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.”
I wondered how many current pastors, bishops, priests and teachers were going to be severely judged for all the hogwash they had been preaching and teaching. I wanted to yell it from the rooftop but God told me to cool it and just learn.
So, I held my tongue, at least for a while.
Hmmmm…
As I studied the Word day and night between laundry loads and taking care of my family, I grew in knowledge and wisdom in ways I would have never thought possible. Something was happening to me.
God began to powerfully visit me.
I suddenly had the urge to study the lives of great reformers such as John Wycliffe, George Fox, John Calvin, John Knox and in particular, Martin Luther, the Battle-Axe of Reform. I laughed when I remembered how Garrett used to call me that name when we were first married.
“You battle-axe!” he yelled at me when I opened my big mouth. If only he had known.
As I studied the life of Martin Luther, I felt kindred to him.
I even had a last name similar to him, I thought.
(Luther sounds like Lubben) Maybe, I thought.
When I read that Luther spearheaded the great Reformation and it literally still impacts the Christian world today, I felt a “strange” similar call on my life but had no idea what it could be. Then I read that Luther often stood alone, lost friends and family, stirred international conflict, angered leaders of nations, and created chaos for the Roman Catholic Church.
Gulp. I didn’t want to lose everything I loved and held dear. But I couldn’t deny the major attraction I felt toward the words, “The Great Reformation.”
As I continued to hungrily study the lives of powerful ministers and great reformers, I also latched onto who would become my favorite all time mentor and preacher, Charles Spurgeon, also known as “Prince of the Preachers.”
Now, I coul
d go to his church! I thought.
It was a shame he was dead. It seemed like all the great preachers of the Gospel were dead.
Great, all of my mentors are dead, I thought.
I hung out at Spurgeon.org for years and bought Charles Spurgeon books and soaked myself in hundreds of his sermons. He preached over 600 sermons before the age of 21! I couldn’t get enough of him!
Yes, I became a Spurgeonite.
I also studied the phenomenal lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Graham and one of my personal Catholic favorites, Mother Teresa. She is one of my greatest mentors who taught me about love, patience and humility.
Finally, I was being fed MEAT, and not the milk that most churches offered. I started to understand that God was calling me into a deeper and higher time of learning in the knowledge of Him and that it may be the reason why a church home didn’t open up for us.
That’s when God really visited me.
I began to spend hours alone with God listening to His powerful Voice speak to me through the natural paradise in my backyard. As I admired our beautiful new grapevine trellis, I thought of the powerful words of Jesus in John 15:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
I held the green soft vine in my hand as I thought about the Lord’s serious words to me. I never wanted to do anything apart from Him. I had already been to hell and back and wasn’t interested in ever leaving the Lord’s side.
The Lord also talked to me through the fruit trees we planted. The first year there was no fruit but as we obeyed and followed Him, we began to see small fruit pop up on our lemon, lime and apricot trees. It was amazing! Our backyard turned into a prophetic symbol of the work and growth that God was continuing in our lives.
Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn Page 16